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Sara Schwartz

Associate Teaching Professor

Blends cross-disciplinary strategies from social work, anthropology and visual arts to understand and communicate about complex social justice issues. 

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Sara Schwartz
Phone:  +1 510.384.0997
Rank:  Teaching Faculty

Sara Schwartz

Associate Teaching Professor

Blends cross-disciplinary strategies from social work, anthropology and visual arts to understand and communicate about complex social justice issues. 

Media Contact

Biography

Sara L. Schwartz is an associate teaching professor in the MSW and DSW programs. She approaches teaching and scholarship from a cross-disciplinary lens bridging social work, anthropology and visual arts. 

Schwartz instructs students on social science methods for understanding complex social justice issues, community-based participatory research, program evaluation, policy, qualitative methods and visual social work. She is the faculty lead for the Visual Social Work Graduate Certificate which she launched in 2022.

Her scholarship focuses on aging with bleeding disorders, HIV/AIDS, historical trauma in diverse communities and visual social work. Schwartz serves on the board of the directors of the National AIDS Memorial and is a co-producer of the annual Surviving Voices documentary films.

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Education

University of Southern California

MA, Visual Anthropology (expected 2024)

University of California, Berkeley

Postdoctoral Fellowship 2009

Portland State University

PhD 2007

Virginia Commonwealth University

MSW 2001

University of Colorado

BA 1995

Area of Expertise

  • Visual social work
  • HIV/AIDS
  • Aging with Hemophilia
  • Program evaluation
  • Qualitative inquiry
  • Philanthropy

Industry Experience

  • Non-Profit/Charitable
  • Social Services
  • Education/Learning
  • Research
  • Philanthropy

Affiliations

  • HIV Story Project
  • National AIDS Memorial

Articles & Publications

Schwartz, S.L., & Angulo, R.C. (2023). Visual social work. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, Issues of Equity Chapter. [in press]

Strassman, J.A., Schwartz, S.L., Weiss, E.L., & Petrila, A. (2022). Everyone’s war becomes my war. Advances in Social Work, 22(1), doi: 10.108060/26263.

Parga, J., .Schwartz, S.L, & Reyes, M. (2022). Social work academia and COVID-19: The great equalizer. The International Journal of Continuing Social Work Education [Special Edition: Using Virtual Platforms to Provide Learning and Engagement Opportunities During a Pandemic],25(1), p. 4-16.

Schwartz, S.L., & Wiley, J.L. (2019). The person-in-the-virtual-environment: Building a diverse, engaged, and collaborative virtual faculty. In Maiden, R.P. (Ed) The Transformation of Social Work Education Through Virtual Education. Cambridge Scholars.

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